Ultimate Spider-Man Preview

One of the beauties of the Spider-Man franchise is that it’s been continually improving since the early days of its iterations on the NES and SNES. Ever since the beloved web slinger graced current generation consoles for the first time, fans across the globe have fallen in love with his various abilities! The first game, Spider-Man relied on a mix of unique story elements derived from the movie and a decent combat system that offered a wide variety of battle tactics. Spider-Man 2 also focused on the movie, but not as well as it could’ve. However, with the vast improvement over the web swinging physics and free roaming aspects, it was a superhero hit! Now with Ultimate Spider-Man, we no longer have to worry about a poor movie story emulation, it’s taken straight from the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book universe itself!

In recent years, the use of the cel-shading technique has not only evolved, but it has become more and more prominent as the engine for bringing us the graphical display of numerous games. Whether that might be the controversial Wind Waker, XIII, Tales of Symphonia and even Killer 7, cel-shading/anime has become more and more popular among developers. Joining another cel-shaded superhero adventure in X-Men Legends, Ultimate Spider-Man follows suit in delivering on an authentic cel-shaded experience that emulates the comics beautifully!

So yeah, Ultimate Spider-Man is cel-shaded, but how does it benefit the overall experience? Well, there are actually a few things that it does. US boasts not only unique character models and various world designs, but the game brings it all in a highly stylized fashion! The game actually gives the cel-shading technique a nice upgrade by offering multiple sources of light to bounce of the characters. Spidey himself can be seen having six different sources of light bouncing off him at once. Even more impressive are the game’s cinematics. US can blend traditional graphic panels with jaw dropping in-game rendering techniques. So to basically sum that up, imagine the comic book world in motion, and you have this!

As far as the game goes story structure-wise, US splits various story-driven missions and exploits between two characters, Spidey and Venom! That’s right! For all you fans out there that have so badly desired to play a Spider-Man villain in one of his games, the chance is coming! So you can play both characters, but unfortunately only one at a time. Thanks to comic book scribe Brian Michael Bendis, the stories of the two will be beautifully interwoven and not seemingly “thrown together” just to please fans that have waited so long for something like this. Actual story missions are tied into the freeform access of the city where you are free to swing about battling any evildoers you might encounter. Whenever any kind of citizen may be in distress, a beacon will appear on the lower right map on the screen.

Now just like in Spider-Man 2, you aren’t forced to do anything, so you can just as easily allow distressed citizens to suffer at the hands of various criminals if you wish to. But come on…..you know you want to pummel the living daylights out of them…..I just know you do! You are also just as free to swing to your heart’s content from skyscraper to skyscraper all day long. Now Manhattan may not be quite as big as it was in Spider-Man 2 this time around, but there will be more landmarks for you to check out to make up for it! Such Marvel landmarks like the Baxter Building and the Empire State University are easily accessible! So to put it simply, take Spider-Man 2 and some of the unnecessary aspects out and a nicer storyline, you have US! But what’s even cooler about US is the fact that some parts of Queens will be accessible in some parts of the game, so there are newer areas to explore for you!

Just like mentioned before, Venom is now a playable character in US, so that will do nothing but add to the gameplay experience! Playing as him will be radically different as well. He moves completely different, jumps completely different and attacks completely different! Instead of taking the easy way out and just “swinging” his way through the city, he will more excitingly jump from rooftop to rooftop Incredible Hulk style! He can also claw up the sides of various buildings and stomp through Manhattan’s streets! Also, just like how he is in the comic book universe, Venom needs to feed off hosts! That means you do lose a little bit of health every few seconds. But no matter, it’s not that difficult to replenish, just grab an unsuspecting civilian and suck the energy right out of him! Dastardly yes, but necessary!